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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Brad Witt, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Pat Robertson, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
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Thank you greedy humans. St Helens was 115 degrees Monday June 28th 2021 I hope you climate deniers have finally seen the light HEAT WAVE
The beautiful green, lush and cool Pacific Northwest has been hit with a scorching heat wave. The year is June 26th to June 29th 2021 where record temperatures reached 115 degrees alongside the rolling Columbia River. This heat wave is an intensity never recorded by modern humans. By one measure it is more rare than a once in a 1,000 year event, which means that if you could live in this particular spot for 1,000 years, you'd likely only experience a heat dome like this once, if ever. Wow! How lucky we are--- first a pandemic that hit us now a 1,000 year old heat wave. Why are we getting this? CLIMATE CHANGE! But the global warming deniers still don’t get it. The heat is being caused by a combination of a significant atmospheric blocking pattern on top of a human-caused climate changed world where baseline temperatures are already a couple to a few degrees higher than nature intended. This heat wave comes on the heels of another historic heat wave less than two weeks ago that baked the U.S. Intermountain West, Desert Southwest and California with hundreds of record highs. the eastern U.S. is also seeing the heat ratchet up, with "feels-like" temperatures pushing 100 degrees by Monday and Tuesday in the major cities of the I-95 corridor. The back-to-back and dueling heat waves are made more likely by a very wavy jet stream and our unnaturally heating climate. This is Mother Nature reacting to humans destruction and this heat wave has come to us in June , in a month of warm weather not boiling weather. Our hottest months are yet to come, is this the new normal? How hot are we going to get in August or September? The Pacific Northwest has the possibility of being devasted with forest fires because the forests will be a tinder box. It is a once in a 1,000 or even 10,000-year event for this particular area. How do we know? Like any heat wave, it is being caused by a highly amplified jet stream pattern. These extreme jet stream perturbations are a natural, normal part of the atmosphere. But the climate science community is split as to whether these extreme jet stream perturbations are becoming even more likely because of climate change — a phenomena known as the wavy jet stream. Along with a more wavy, buckling and slow-moving jet stream. When the jet stream — a band of strong wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere — becomes very wavy and elongated, pressure systems can pinch off and become stalled or stuck in places they typically would not be. Then comes a phenomena called "blocking". This is when waves in the jet stream become so elongated that they break off, sit and spin. In this case there is a textbook type of block called an Omega block over the Pacific Northwest because it looks like the Greek letter Omega. Inside this Omega, the heat pools and intensifies. Areas of high pressure, like heat domes, have sinking air. This compresses the air on the ground and through compression it heats the air column. In addition, winds are moving downslope from the mountains downward into cities like Seattle and Portland; that downward motion causes heating as well. There is a faction of climate scientists who believe that a warming climate — specifically the Arctic — results in a more wandering jet stream at certain times of the year. But it is hotly debated; there is an equal amount of research that does not arrive at this conclusion. One thing we can agree on is that its extremely hot and not normal for our region. But most scientists agree that our climate is no longer normal: it is being heated by human-caused climate change. So these once nearly impossible heat waves will become not only possible, but more probable, in the coming years and decades. There are two climate connections. The first is obvious: The atmosphere is simply warmer than it was 100 year ago and so heat waves are warmer than they used to be. But as you increase the average temperature by a few degrees, your extremes, like heat waves, become more extreme at a greater pace. Some scientists have found links between a warming climate and a more wavy jet stream, which can help to cause more extreme heat waves, more extreme storms and more extreme floods. This is because a wavy jet stream forces more warm air north and more cold air south, and it also slows down the forward pace of systems. This adds more instability in the atmosphere and more extreme impacts. Some research, in which they find that a specific type of Northern Hemisphere blocking — what they call Quasi Resonant Amplification — will increase by 50% this century under business as usual human-forced climate warming. What is it going to take to get humans to figure it out? Whatever the cause, agree or disagree the result of an extreme jet stream pattern is extreme weather across many parts of the nation and globe. Over the past few days, the central U.S. has seen over a foot of rain with flash flooding along a stalled front. While natural swings between hot and cold patterns will continue, the trend is clear, extreme heat waves are bound to become more common, more extreme and more deadly in the coming years. In practice, the solution to worsening extreme weather is a herculean challenge for humanity, but in theory it is simple: "We can prevent things from getting worse if we rapidly decarbonize our civilization. I will excuse humans for the industrial revolution because they didn’t know what was the effects and after math of this period of the world. But as humans figured it out, why are we so stupid not to stop the insanity. Why would we kill our beautiful planet, our home? our very lives? Because man puts greed and money over and above all things--- even his own survival. Humans are supposed to be the smartest being on the planet yet we do the stupidest things over and over. Will we ever stop the insanity? I hope so, if not for us humans, how about for the other creatures which share The Big Blue Marble.
Tammy
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